Coming back from disappointments (insight into the mind of a novice)

[Little_Flatty]

I had a bit of a thought-bubble today as I have been Marie Kondo-ing my workspace and banishing it of anything brewing, fishing or cycling related unless it was absolutely needed on a day to day basis. (I also think I have too many hobbies!).

The thought-bubble was this: I think it has been a long time since many of us could have genuinely considered ourselves novice anglers. Even though we might not be tournament winners, we've caught a few of our bucket list fish and have racked up countless happy memories over the years.

Thus, donuts don't hurt as much as it might do so for a less experienced angler, because we know that the fishing will come around for us eventually, or we can at least change to a more familiar form of fishing (e.g. bait or smaller quarry) and have some success + a break from donuts. Even losing a decent fish these days, I have to admit that even though I do get disappointed, the overwhelming feeling I get is one of amusement, coupled with gratitude that I was able to at least fleetingly connect with a good fish. Poor results keep me hungry for more and make me think of 100 ways to do better next time.

I'm not as experienced a brewer as I am an angler, but I had invested heavily in the hobby over the past few years. I've achieved some beautiful brews in my time, but about a year ago I entered a brewing competition and the feedback came back that it was infected. The homebrew community is famous for being brutally honest, but beautifully supportive at the same time. I tried to take the feedback with a sense of humour (even contemplating making home made vinegar!) but I have to admit that it has kind of broken me and I've only done a few brews since, only one of which I was actually happy with. Not as experienced as other brewers, the only option from my research seems to be ditching all of my fermenting/bottling equipment and starting again. This was very disappointing and I felt a little trapped in my future development. Thankfully this equipment is relatively cheap.

Tidying up my brewing equipment today has made me realise that I know very well what it feels like to be a novice angler, who has come back from countless donuts and not knowing what to do to improve the situation.

So the question to the raiders here, both novice and experienced alike, how do you come back from a soul-crushing experience (first-world or otherwise)? What should a new (or even experienced) angler do after a series of poor sessions? How do we stay hungry for more and not give up so easily?

For me, I've formulated a plan to get back on the brew horse again, like making some small adjustments to my sanitation routine and going through which equipment to keep vs discard. Then I might try something simple which I have done successfully before, such as a single hop pale ale, and then re-evaluate.

[bluefin]

I need to think about this !   Its Complicated. 

[Little_Flatty]

19 minutes ago, bluefin said:

I need to think about this !   Its Complicated. 

Sorry, no light thinking exercises from me today...might be time for me to crack a beer! 🤣

[bluefin]

These life events, big and small all effect our self esteem. We loose faith in ourselves and our ability. We become anxious, stressed and depressed. Time, and encouragement from those we look up to eventually gets us up again. I just spent 4 years rebuilding my mental state after a major breakdown. I have a lot of Psychological posters that helped me ! 

What we Focus on the most,

 Is what We move towards.

 

 

Have Clear Goals.

And a Clear plan to achieve them.

 

 

Do our Beliefs Align with our Goals.

We must have Empowering beliefs.

 

We must be Grateful for what We have, What We  have Experienced and what We have Learnt.

Edited February 13, 2022 by bluefin

[bluefin]

[bluefin]

Stick to one style of fishing, don't chop and change until you are happy !

 

[Little_Flatty]

21 minutes ago, bluefin said:

These life events, big and small all effect our self esteem. We loose faith in ourselves and our ability. We become anxious, stressed and depressed. Time, and encouragement from those we look up to eventually gets us up again. I just spent 4 years rebuilding my mental state after a major breakdown. I have a lot of Psychological posters that helped me ! 

What we Focus on the most,

 Is what We move towards.

 

 

Have Clear Goals.

And a Clear plan to achieve them.

 

 

Do our Beliefs Align with our Goals.

We must have Empowering beliefs.

 

We must be Grateful for what We have, What We  have Experienced and what We have Learnt.

Good to hear you are doing better @bluefin and sorry to hear you've been through a rough patch. Certainly doesn't sound like first world problems. Being upset about poor fishing/brewing certainly is a first world problem, even though it still might be important to us.

8 minutes ago, bluefin said:

5 minutes ago, bluefin said:

Stick to one style of fishing, don't chop and change until you are happy !

 

Agreed! Anyone who has studied any music or played any sport will know this!

Listened to an enchanting interview with Peter Pakula recently on doclures and he's now a fly fisho more than a game angler! His reason was that he had ticked off all of his game fishing goals and needed a new challenge, that he hadn't yet mastered. Interesting way of looking at life!

[kingie chaser]

 

 

 

As the old aussie saying goes-

Pick yourself up, dust yourself off & get back on the horse 🙂

[Rebel]

 Being serious. Walk away.

Find something else.

There are a stack of Hobbies to be found.

This is the lucky country ( Australia ). 

Some don't think so,but they live in another world.

Cheers.

[Mike Sydney]

37 minutes ago, Rebel said:

 Being serious. Walk away.

Find something else.

There are a stack of Hobbies to be found.

This is the lucky country ( Australia ). 

Some don't think so,but they live in another world.

Cheers.

Someone followed your advice. Spotted at Friend Ave the other day…

 

In terms of managing disappointment and learning curves, one of bluefins quotes really resonates with me and that’s having goals, and in particular having small enough measures that you can see improvements gradually rather than a binary goal that is either achieved or not. 

Here’s a random story. In a past life, I was a juggler. I was pretty good too, even in competing in the world champs in Vegas as a teenager (yes, there are world championships!). 3 and 4 balls came easily enough, but juggling 5 was a real challenge. I could get to 13 throws and catches but hit a wall for a good year where I just couldn’t improve on this and get that 14th catch. 

When you fail at juggling 5 balls, you fail dramatically. The balls collide, bounce away, roll under beds and behind couches. You might spend a whole minute or two regathering only to fail again within a single second. I remember hearing one of the best jugglers in the world - Anthony Gatto -  had an elaborate setup where he’d had a large custom sheet attached to the ceiling at one end with him standing in a hole in the middle with an elastic waistband keeping it flush to his body, so that any drops would roll back down the sheets to his hands, thus maximising his training efficiency. 

Not being him, I had to deal with bad drops but persisted hard - hours a day for months on end - but eventually threw my hands up and quit it, returning to easier tasks. 

After about a six month break, I gave it another go and broke the 14th catch in one of my first few attempts. With the mental barrier broken through taking a break, the floodgates opened and I finally cracked the code and was able to keep them up for several minutes. 

A few years later I did the same with seven balls, which is exponentially harder but ultimately the same learning curve. This time I was able to take a break without feeling like I was quitting. That was a real crucial motivator and I got on top seven much, much faster than I had with 5 balls despite the difficulty and the extra chaos a 7-ball drop can do in a small living room. 

Having dropped and had to pick up at least a million juggling balls in my time,  getting a donut fishing doesn’t register as a fail - I know I’m becoming a better angler every single cast, even if today’s casting seems awful. 

My moral here is take breaks if you’re hitting a wall and understand it’s not quitting but a healthy part of the process and know you’re improving overall, even if recent results are poor.

[XD351]

You think you have too many hobbies ?

Fishing , model engineering , electronics, target shooting , home brewing ,3D printing and gaming are what consumes my time although target shooting got the flick a few years back when they stopped running events in Sydney - a 6hr drive to get to a comp was the straw that broke the camel’s back .I gave away home brewing as well - not because i didn’t enjoy it or wasn’t good at it ,I just didn’t have the room to do it anymore .

Model engineering and electronics are currently being streamlined and to some extent downsized and I have trimmed the fat off my fishing gear collection as well .

If I have a donut day when fishing I don’t really care as I’m just happy to be out there but I will think about it and try to come up with a solution so next time is different  . Model engineering and electronics can have me pulling hair out with frustration and when I hit a wall like that I find the best thing ( for me anyway) is to put it away for a while and do something else  - sometimes this has been a year or more and come back to it with a fresh mind . If you enter anything into a competition expect it to be picked to pieces and that is why the engines i build never go near a model engineering exhibition- I build them for my satisfaction and couldn’t care less what anyone else thinks of them .

If one of your brews did get infected then you need to go through all of the equipment and clean then sterilise everything . Make sure you take the seal out of the lid of your fermenter and the grommet for the bubbler as bacteria can get in behind there . I used to use bleach to clean and sterilise everything . One thing many forget is to sterilise the caps as well - you can’t be to clean . 

 

 

[Little_Flatty]

9 hours ago, Rebel said:

 Being serious. Walk away.

Find something else.

There are a stack of Hobbies to be found.

This is the lucky country ( Australia ). 

Some don't think so,but they live in another world.

Cheers.

I think that's why I have so many hobbies @Rebel. I took a break (like @Mike Sydney suggests), but I always come back 🤣

8 hours ago, Mike Sydney said:

Someone followed your advice. Spotted at Friend Ave the other day…

Love it Mike!🤣

Also had no idea you were a world class juggler!

More seriously, having small goals that are within your control is really helpful. You can't control whether a 150cm mulloway is going to be swimming past at a given time, but you can control having your bait sitting in a known mulloway haunt at a prime time. Another goal could be to identify likely spots to try for a given species, which I have been doing over the past two months; this has entailed learning more about tides and currents, and observing how this relates to my catch. Currently I'm working on my casting distance and accuracy, plenty of improvement to be had there and with a little focus, it has been honestly getting better. I think that working on both those goals have led to me increasing the quality of fish caught.

6 hours ago, XD351 said:

You think you have too many hobbies ?

Fishing , model engineering , electronics, target shooting , home brewing ,3D printing and gaming are what consumes my time although target shooting got the flick a few years back when they stopped running events in Sydney - a 6hr drive to get to a comp was the straw that broke the camel’s back .I gave away home brewing as well - not because i didn’t enjoy it or wasn’t good at it ,I just didn’t have the room to do it anymore .

Model engineering and electronics are currently being streamlined and to some extent downsized and I have trimmed the fat off my fishing gear collection as well .

If I have a donut day when fishing I don’t really care as I’m just happy to be out there but I will think about it and try to come up with a solution so next time is different  . Model engineering and electronics can have me pulling hair out with frustration and when I hit a wall like that I find the best thing ( for me anyway) is to put it away for a while and do something else  - sometimes this has been a year or more and come back to it with a fresh mind . If you enter anything into a competition expect it to be picked to pieces and that is why the engines i build never go near a model engineering exhibition- I build them for my satisfaction and couldn’t care less what anyone else thinks of them .

If one of your brews did get infected then you need to go through all of the equipment and clean then sterilise everything . Make sure you take the seal out of the lid of your fermenter and the grommet for the bubbler as bacteria can get in behind there . I used to use bleach to clean and sterilise everything . One thing many forget is to sterilise the caps as well - you can’t be to clean . 

 

 

Wow. That IS a lot of hobbies!

I have to agree that a lot of enjoyment from fishing is just being out there. And the fact it can be hard going sometimes adds to the fun, rather than detracting from it. But if you have NEVER caught a good fish, I suspect it could be very hard to enjoy your fishing in this way. As a novice, you wonder if it is **ever** going to happen.

In this way, I think the mindset of an experienced angler is very different to that of a novice; an experienced angler knows that success will come with time and practice, whilst a novice does not know this for sure (at least in their mind).

I'm trying to think about this from the perspective of the newer anglers on this community who are being bombarded (in the best way) with advice. I can certainly understand how one might harbour a lukewarm sentiment when they are told that a certain lure will work, or that they need to just put the time in (which is true). At this stage in their angling careers, they don't quite believe that all these things will catch them fish. All I will say is that when you discover something that works, regardless of whether you discovered it yourself or someone told/taught you, it is an amazing feeling.

On the brewing front, I do have a plan. Just got to wait until I feel like taking a break from fishing (could be while)!

[Ganguddy Goodoo]

On 2/13/2022 at 4:57 PM, Little_Flatty said:

Thus, donuts don't hurt as much as it might do so for a less experienced angler, because we know that the fishing will come around for us eventually, or we can at least change to a more familiar form of fishing (e.g. bait or smaller quarry) and have some success + a break from donuts. Even losing a decent fish these days, I have to admit that even though I do get disappointed, the overwhelming feeling I get is one of amusement, coupled with gratitude that I was able to at least fleetingly connect with a good fish. Poor results keep me hungry for more and make me think of 100 ways to do better next time.

 

Great topic LF

I'm a bit the other way. I kind of expected to fail 1st up. I did however start fishing with a 5 year old who was keen at the time. I felt I'd failed if he didn't get a few. Didn't worry me if I went out by myself. I was focussed on learning and having a nice walk on the river and enjoyed every session.

With a few years under my belt I tend to give myself an uppercut if I lose a fish I shouldn't. Failing due to carelessness seems worse than failing through ignorance (especially if you know you are a numpty). Still enjoy a walk on the river regardless.